Boutique hotel stretches income by renting by the hour during the day

One London hotel has come up with a new way to make an extra buck during the day, in between check-out time and check-in. Between the hours of 10am and 4pm, it's offering its rooms for £19. For what comes out to £3.17 an hour, guests get everything the room normally offers (bed, TV, free wireless Internet), plus a free hour of local calls.

Smart thinking! The rooms just lie fallow for those hours, so the potential for a new revenue stream, thin as it will be, is better than the nothing the place is collecting now during the same period. The clever hotel, the Hoxton, surmises that most of its potential customers will be businessmen who need meeting space but not a whole conference room.